


Sex Sells

by PresquePommes



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sex Shop, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 08:37:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1298473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PresquePommes/pseuds/PresquePommes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somebody tagged a prostitution fic with something about sex shops.</p><p>Have a drabble actually about sex shops- </p><p>In which Levi doesn't give enough of a fuck to shame people and Eren is so disconnected from the concept of shame that it's a literal non-issue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

If Eren Jaeger had been a little more self-aware, he might have realized that Armin had come out to him because he had a history of being bluntly accepting about anything that didn’t directly conflict with his worldview.

However, it was precisely because Eren lacked this awareness that he had such an unconcerned demeanor: a ground screw in some dusty corner of his brain hadn’t been wound quite tight enough during adolescence, and the result was a frequently misfiring circuit that ran between his sense of curiosity and the various hubs that evaluated the contextual appropriateness of this comment or that joke.

It was an idiosyncrasy that had gotten him into trouble more than once, but it was also the part of him that Armin treasured for its serene acceptance and childlike honesty.

This was why Armin had told Eren first, though he had no doubt his family would be accepting.

This was also why he had asked Eren to accompany him as he embarked on the first step of his journey of sexual self-discovery: to a sex shop.

It didn’t matter that Eren’s own social libido seemed to be in permanent hibernation- Armin wasn’t looking for advice.

He was looking for comfort.

For someone to break the tension, to assure him with his nonchalance that sexuality was unquestionably normal and that experimentation was nothing to be ashamed of.

Despite his lack of knowledge- and _because_ of his lack of knowledge- Eren provided that in spades.

That was how Eren found himself leaning down beside a nervous Armin as he turned a small silicone bulb over in his hands, murmuring anxiously in the quiet store.

Eren stood up and, spotting a clerk wiping down the glass display of his cash desk, quite unabashedly called,

“Excuse me, what is this?”

The man- dark-haired, with tired smudges under his eyes, and deceptively petite but for the hard muscle he could see moving under his shirt, he realized belatedly- looked up at him, glancing from him to the object in Armin’s hands.

“It’s a butt plug,” he said frankly, “which is exactly what it sounds like.”

Eren made a noise of comprehension. “So you put it in your butt?”

The clerk stared at him silently for a moment, gaze flickering from one of Eren’s eyes to the other. “Yes.”

Eren smiled sunnily at him. “Have you ever used one?” he asked curiously, and Armin made a strangled sound of protest beside him.

“Eren, you can’t just ask people that,” he hissed, and Eren frowned, about to apologize when the clerk barked with laughter.

“Are you drunk or just shameless?”

Eren considered it. “The second one,” he stated decisively, and watched- with more interest than he had expected to- the corner of the clerk’s mouth quirk up in amusement.

“No, I’ve never used one,” he answered, “but the one your friend is holding doesn’t rate as highly amongst our regulars as the one a shelf below it, and it’s more expensive, too.”

Armin put it back hastily, picking up the one the clerk had indicated with a grateful smile.

Eren rocked back on his heels, tempted to keep badgering the man behind the counter, but thought better of it.

He listened to Armin murmur indecisively about the size of the thing he was holding until he finally took a leap of faith and settled on it.

Their conversation turned mundane as they wove their way towards the cash, unhurried.

“-but nobody’s ever hiring in the inner city,” Eren was complaining as Armin set the plug on the glass of the desk with a sheepish smile.

He missed the speculative look the clerk shot him.

“You got a resume on you?”

Eren blinked at him, nonplussed. “Yeah.”

The clerk held out his hand impatiently, scanning and bagging Armin’s item almost absentmindedly with the other.

Eren paused halfway through opening his bag, fidgeting with the edges of paper inside. “Why me?” he asked, puzzled, following it with a hopeful, “You’re hiring?” a moment later.

The clerk grunted, snatching the resume out of his hand as soon as it was visible.

“We’ve only recently started doing private parties. Brings the toys to the prudes but takes my top seller away from the shop,” he said flatly, “and you because you don’t make big shit out of little shit, and that’s good for business. If you’re not embarrassed, they won’t be. Can you do that for me,” he glanced down at the sheet in his hand, “Eren?”

Eren thought about it and then smiled crookedly, shrugging. “I’m not really sure what you mean, but I guess so.”

The clerk had been quiet for a few moments, ringing up Armin’s purchase with a contemplative air, but he responded to Eren’s confession by studying his face carefully and then snorting, nostrils flaring and lips tugging outwards. “Even better. I’ll tell you what, Eren: I don’t do interviews. I need to know how you are in action. Come in for a couple hours on Friday. If you’re good, I’ll take you on. Can you do that for me?” His eyes flickered down again. “You’re not in school, right?”

Eren tried to nod and shake his head simultaneously, an unrestrained grin working its way across his mouth. “I can do that.”

The clerk nodded sharply at him. “I’m Levi,” he said. He didn’t offer Eren his hand.

Eren didn’t even notice.

As he and Armin were leaving the store- Armin sending him amused little glances above the tastefully opaque black bag clutched in his fists- Eren hummed contently.

“He was nice.”

Armin chuckled softly beside him.

***

His first shift went so brilliantly that Levi kept him on for the rest of the afternoon, even taking the time to show him the essentials of closing the store when it was over.

Nonetheless, he still asked,

“Did I do okay?”

As Levi locked the door after them for the night, and the flat stare he received in response did something odd to his guts.

“Go home, you fucking turd,” Levi told him, but he barely had time to be dejected before he tacked on a, “just make sure you’re here for nine tomorrow- I need to put you in the system and make sure you get paid for today- it’s not training after the third hour.”

Eren was beatific.

For the first few weeks, it was great.

But then the Valentine’s Day rush subsided, and suddenly Eren was faced with a peculiar predicament.

He found his eyes wandering to the small but imposing figure of his co-worker and superior.

At first, he couldn’t understand it- he’d never experienced something like this before.

It was only after he’d confessed his confusion to Armin and watched Armin suck in a concerned breath between his teeth that everything had clicked.

 _‘Holy shit, I have a thing for my supervisor,’_ he thought dimly, caught in the thrall of amazement, eyes tracing the muscles of Levi’s back through the thin white fabric of his button-down.

He’d always been sexual, but never sexually interested in other people.

This was the shift he realized that Levi’s admittedly very particular and efficient method of cleaning the toys of any fingerprints or lingering oils- gripping the base with one hand and drawing the cloth up with the shaft with the other in a twisting motion- reminded him very strongly of something else.

He felt the heat rising in his face, but he didn’t know how obvious it was until Levi turned around, quirked an eyebrow, and asked him,

“What, you holding in a shit or something? You look like you’re about to fucking explode.”

 _‘Oh fuck,’_ Eren thought intelligently, trying not to see the way Levi was gripping the dildo in his hand but still registering it in his peripheral vision.

_‘This is not okay.’_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still totally a fic about these nerds working in a sex shop.
> 
> Enter Hanji Zoë, stage left.

If Levi noticed something was wrong, he didn’t give Eren any clear indication that he had- Eren wasn’t sure if he was imagining the sigh he heaved when Eren nearly dropped a box of glass toys upon entering emerging from the back room to the sight of Levi stretching up as high as he could reach to sweep the cobwebs out of the corners of the ceiling.

“I could do that,” Eren stumbled, and Levi shot him a scathing look over his shoulder.

It didn’t help matters, because the motion twisted his back just _so_ , and the muscles lining the arch of his spine and spanning the breadth of his shoulders stood out proudly through the fabric of his shirt.

Eren’s mouth had gone a little dry.

He’d developed an unexpected appreciation for anatomy recently, and he still wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

Armin hadn’t been much help, either- he responded to Eren’s pleas with a surrendering gesture and a pointed,

“He’s your boss, Eren,”

which didn’t exactly clear things up for him.

It was a quiet day, and Eren thought his nervous tension and sidelong looks were going unnoticed- something he both desired and was oddly disappointed by, for reasons he couldn’t quite explain- right up until Levi sighed heavily through his nose, throwing his cloth down on the glass of the counter.

“Oi. You got something you want to say to me, Eren?”

“No _,_ ” he replied immediately. His voice cracked.

Levi’s eyebrows shot up.

“You’re saying you don’t have something on your mind?” Levi asked again, and Eren fidgeted, shifting from one foot to the other like a child in need of a toilet.

“No,” Eren answered honestly, “you asked me if I had anything I _wanted_ to say, not if I had anything on my mind.”

Levi closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with a long-suffering mutter of, “Fucking _kids_.”

Eren’s insides twisted at that. “I’m twenty,” he said sullenly.

Levi cracked open an eye to look at him. “Your point being?”

“I’m not a kid.”

His responding expression was flatly unimpressed. “Adults say what’s on their minds when there’s something on their minds,” Levi murmured more patiently than Eren had expected, “it’s an essential problem-solving skill or some grownup shit like that.”

Eren hummed contemplatively, staring at the wall above Levi’s head.

“That makes sense,” he decided, and then, steeling his oddly roiling guts, added, “I think I think you’re hot.”

Levi just stared at him blankly for a long moment, pinching fingers still hovering just an inch or so away from his expressionless face.

“You think,” he started, “you think? As in you don’t know?”

Eren considered that, scrunching his eyebrows. “No, I’m pretty sure,” he confirmed, “I’m just kind of new to this.”

Levi suddenly looked incredibly wary. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve just never really been interested in this sort of stuff before,” Eren admits, shrugging and setting the toy he’s been absentmindedly cleaning to the side before he can wear off its smooth finish with sustained friction. “I never really got the appeal.”

If Levi’s face was a book that Eren wasn’t too interpersonally illiterate to read, he would have seen the frank shock in his wide eyes and flat mouth. “Eren, are you a virgin?”

Eren shrugged again. “I guess so.”

“You’re a twenty year old virgin who works in a sex shop,” Levi reiterated disbelievingly.

Eren didn’t have the chance to respond to that before someone else did.

“So one of my boys can’t take the stick out of his ass long enough to put a toy in there, let alone a dick,” a lilting voice called from the door, “and the other isn’t interested unless that dick happens to belong to Mr. Clean over here, he-of-the-stick-uppeth-his-butt?” There was a pause. “-eth?”

“Hanji,” Levi snarled. Eren just laughed.

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” he smiled nonchalantly, scratching the back of his head. “Sorry, Levi, I guess I forgot not to make a big deal about it.” He fidgeted with the cloth in his hands. “Armin made it sound like the worst thing in the world to tell you.”

Hanji Zoë, arguably the best salesperson in the city when it came to sex-related paraphernalia, hooted with laughter, dropped their bags on the floor and swept Eren into a gleeful one-armed hug. “I love this kid,” they announced, not for the first time, “can we keep him? Levi, _please?”_

“He already works here,” Levi snapped, and the unconcerned fog in Eren's brain parted for long enough to realize that despite his characteristically grumpy face, Levi was moving oddly.

Kind of jerkily, like he wasn’t sure what to do with himself.

“Are you okay?” Eren asked him, suddenly worried.

Levi just turned his back, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like a baffled,

“Of all fucking people, why _me?”_

“Because you’re hot?” Eren offered helpfully, and Levi just looked at him.

“I think that was a rhetorical question, Eren,” Hanji mock-whispered in his ear, and Eren made a startled sound of comprehension.

“Sorry,” he apologized sunnily, “you can go back to talking to yourself then. Now that Hanji’s back, I have to replace anything they’ve sold in their kit, anyway.”

Levi continued staring at him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm not taking this story incredibly seriously, if you couldn't tell.

Following Eren’s confession, Levi’s attitude seemed to swing unpredictably between ‘aggressively casual’ and ‘housecat warily eying the vacuum cleaner the day after spring cleaning.’

Eren watched as he Levi wove an unnecessarily broad path around him on the way to the vibrators.

Experimentally, and more on a whim than anything, he stuck his arm out in front of him as he passed.

Levi was quick enough to avoid being clotheslined, but he still jerked convulsively and crushed the box of stock he was carrying to his chest as he ducked and weaved.

Eren beheld the scowl Levi turned on him with interest. “What the hell was that about?”

“You’re avoiding me.”

Levi’s expression smoothed over into something more characteristically unreadable, if a good deal more sullen than normal. “We work together, I can’t avoid you.”

Eren frowned.

Levi sighed. “Look, I don’t want to- I don’t know what you want from me, Eren.”

He considered what that was supposed to mean and drew a perfect, unblemished blank.

“Want from you?” he echoed, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion.

Levi shoved the slightly crumpled box of stock on a clear patch of shelving and turned back to him, running his hand through his hair and glancing towards the storefront and back room door.

“Look, Eren, I’m a lot older than you,” he told him frankly, making a sharp downwards cutting gesture with the hand he hadn’t tucked into his pocket. “And you’re a virgin. I know you’re not used to wanting someone like this, and all things considered, I’m a pretty fucking terrible first choice.”

Eren considered that and furrowed his eyebrows even further.

“It kind of sounds like you’ve been thinking about this a lot more than I have,” he pointed out, and Levi responded by producing a worrisomely strangled choking noise that sounded mortified, affronted, and interrogative all at once.

If Eren had turned around, he would’ve seen Hanji lean out of the back room door behind him, wearing the ugliest and most knowing grin he would ever have had the dubious pleasure of seeing, but as it was, he only saw the furious scowl Levi directed to a space somewhere over his left shoulder.

“Despite what you apparently think of me, I’m not enough of a bastard to take your feelings so lightly,” he snarled.

Eren cocked his head to the side, wishing for the first time in a long time that he was better able to follow the path of other people’s thoughts. “I don’t really understand, I’m sorry.”

Levi was starting to look exasperated. “Eren, generally when people tell somebody they think they maybe want to screw them, it’s because they think it’s important the other person knows,” he explained impatiently. “And typically speaking, that’s because telling somebody that sort of thing is supposed to be an invitation or, fuck, I don’t know, a statement of intent.”

Eren’s eyes widened. “A statement of intent?” he asked curiously. Levi pinched at bridge of his nose, visibly frustrated.

“Eren, why exactly did you tell me you have a thing for me?”

He thought about it. “Because you asked.”

Levi just stared at him silently.

“I mean, I wouldn’t say no,” he ventured, “because I do think you’re really hot, but I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing with all-” he gestured vaguely “-this, Levi.” He licked his lips, aware of the delicacy of his situation but uncertain what should and should not be said. “I just know that I want to touch you, but I hadn’t really thought a lot about actually doing it,” he admitted.

Levi’s expression made Eren think of someone trying to solve an especially convoluted mathematical problem- something involving the speed of trains relative to the weight of their passengers and how their travel times compared.

“ _Do it,_ ” someone breathed unnervingly close behind Eren’s ear, and he jumped, whirling around to face them.

Hanji was wearing an unsettling grin, their eyes fixed on Levi. “Do it, Levi. You know you want to.”

Levi scowled and pointed at them belligerently. “You give the worst advice.”

“Only if you’re content to be boring forever,” they retorted, slapping their palms down on Eren’s shoulders and turning him to face Levi again. “Look at this,” they said almost reverently, pinching Eren’s chin between their thumb and forefinger and turning it from side to side, “look at him and tell me you’d really pass up hitting it, Levi.”

Eren, confused but not feeling particularly threatened, allowed Hanji to do as they would, instead watching Levi’s glowering face as he opened his mouth to say something that Eren strongly suspected would be a flat denial.

“Tell me _honestly_ ,” Hanji crooned, their breath tickling Eren’s ear uncomfortably.

“God, you’re so fucking creepy,” Levi responded, “let the poor kid go.”

They hummed mischievously but released Eren’s chin anyway, idly massaging his shoulders instead. Eren cleared his throat apprehensively.

“I’m not a-”

“You’re twenty, I know,” Levi interrupted snappishly.

“Do you know what that means, Levi?” Hanji whispered, and Levi narrowed his eyes at them.

“It means shut up, that’s what.

“It means he’s legal,” they continued, undeterred, and Levi ground the heels of his palms into his eyes with a discontented groan.

“All I need is one customer right now,” he muttered, “just one, and this can all stop.”

Eren spoke before he thought about what he was saying. “I don’t know, does it have to?”

Levi’s eyes were wide and piercing as they met his, but he wasn’t sure if it was anger or panic or something else entirely that seemed to have coloured them a lighter shade than usual.

“…Do you not want it to stop, Eren?” Levi asked him carefully, shooting Hanji a glare when they chortled delightedly. “You, get out of here, I’m trying to have a private conversation. Go play with some fresh rubber dicks or something.”

“They’re not rubber, that’d be barbaric,” they called over their shoulder, but went anyway, closing the back room door thoughtfully.

Levi took a deep breath before sighing heavily. “Do you not want this to stop, Eren?” he repeated slowly, eyes watchful.

Eren wasn’t sure if there was a right answer to that, so he opted for the truth.

“Do you mean this conversation or are we talking about something else right now, because I can’t really tell.”

Levi’s eyebrows dropped into a flat line of exasperation. “Why am I bothering with this?” he muttered.  “Why did I think this was a good idea?”

Eren shrugged. “I don’t really know the answer to that, either.”

Levi paused and then snorted, grinding his hands into his eyes again.

The store suddenly seemed very quiet without Hanji.

Eren watched someone in a heavy scarf and hat pass by the shop’s tinted windows, noting with interest how they slowed down for a moment to read the sign before hurrying onwards.

“If I asked you to, would you come home with me?”

Eren blinked. “What?” he asked.

Levi was looking at the display table in front of him with a disgruntled frown. “I’m not fucking repeating that, you little shit.”

“Do you mean, like,” he murmured, “come home with you to do things?”

Levi’s face had started to take on an unfamiliar ruddy hue around the nose and cheeks. “Yes, if that’s what you want. I don’t exactly have an itinerary in mind,” he grumbled. “Christ, you’re the most tactless piece of human garbage I’ve ever met, why am I doing this?”

“Because I’m hot?” Eren offered helpfully.

Levi just looked at him.


End file.
